Yeah, I know I didn't get around to posting much else yesterday other than that incident. Oh well, at least I posted :]

But I'd like to get semi serious for a moment. While I was folding my clothing this morning (He does laundry and can make stomach acid shoot out his nose?! YES!, and I'm available, ladies! ;] ) I got to thinking. Thinking about comics. I used to be a huge comic nerd. There was a time when I bought everything. Everything (I even have the 4 issue marvel mini, "Brute Force" about some cyborg animals hell bent on saving the environment). I actually bought every comic by marvel that came out in the summer of 1990, just to see which ones I'd like and which I would drop. There was a time when Punisher, Spiderman, Xmen, Hulk, Thor, and a plethora of others could do no wrong. I even "oooh'd" if I saw the name "Liefeld" on a comic! I was just that into it. But times they have-a changed. And it's not a money issue. Managing a comic book and gaming store, I can pretty much order ANYTHING I want, at wholesale, and don't even have to pay for it myself. There are titles I pull to read before they hit the shelf. But you know what?

Comics just aren't what they used to be.

Most comics are mediocre at best nowadays. The closest to a "fave" I have is Amazing Spiderman. Not that I'm a huge Spidey fan, but in one issue earlier this summer, JMS (that Babylon 5 guy, I'm not even going to try to spell his last name off the top of my head) wrote something that really made me take notice (I don't remember the specific issue, but it was something that Peter told Mary Jane towards the end of the book). Since then, I've tried to read all the ASM issues (possibly more out of respect, but I haven't been majorly disappointed yet). I enjoy Ultimate Spidey too. But on the whole, there is so much over-inflation out there (from hype to egos and back again) that it's hard to enjoy the medium anymore. The art is so willy-nilly now, it can go from nicely detailed, dynamic poses (See: Jim Lee on Batman) to so simplistic as to be actually ugly (see some of the recent "Catwoman" covers). Even interiors are ragtag. Hitch on Ultimates is great, but then look at the pic of Batman on the last page of the newest issue of "Flash". Ugh! Too many extremes. It makes a good book hard to enjoy, or makes it harder NOT to buy a crappy book just for the art. Writing is in the eye of the beholder as well. Millar is a shock writer. I see nothing spectacular about his writing (it's decent in places, but not so in others), but you can easily see where he'll write something simply to try to shock you. That's just stupid. Build up a pace, a suspense then release it. Don't just throw some crap at me from left field and expect me to bow down and kiss your pasty, white ass for having done so. Grant Morrison, my current "kick in the balls". When he had Xorn reveal himself to be Magneto in "New Xmen", I nearly threw a fit of atomic proportions. LET THE BASTARD STAY DEAD AL'FRIGGIN'READY!!! It's so damn tired and cliche, I don't care how "cleverly" he may have written Xorn. I mentioned a few specifics, but the trend has infiltrated the entire genre en masse, unfortunately.

It makes me long for the days of "Psycho Backhoe".